He US assault to Venezuela has not only been a demonstration of force (above the law), but the confirmation of an intuition that had been floating in the air for years and that the invasion of Ukraine has multiplied: Modern warfare, at least for those who master the technology, increasingly resembles a video game screen.
And, in that scenario, whoever has the best command, has the game.
War as an interactive spectacle. The capture of Nicolás Maduro was the result of months of surveillance obsessive precision, millimetric rehearsal, and such precise coordination that it allowed Washington to execute one of the most complex operations in its recent history with an almost surgical level of control.
From the observation of their routines daily to the exact recreation of their shelter in a full-scale model, everything was designed to reduce uncertainty to a minimum. When Trump gave the final order, he did so knowing that he was not launching his forces into the unknown, but rather activating a script rehearsed to the last second, with cameras, sensors and data links turning the battlefield into an interface controllable from thousands of miles away.
The invisible board. The later satellite images The attack on complexes such as Fuerte Tiuna or the La Carlota air base reveal the essence of this new way of fighting. There are no carpets of bombs or indiscriminate devastation, but concrete buildings reduced to rubblespecific warehouses neutralized and air defense systems dismantled without large visible craters.
The combination of prior intelligence, precision munitions and mastery of airspace allowed the United States to eliminate critical nodes of the Venezuelan military apparatus as if it were turning off icons. on a digital map. From stealth fighters to strategic bombers and swarms of drones, each platform served a defined function within a plan that was developed in multiple simultaneous layerswithout significant interference and with almost total knowledge of the terrain and the enemy.
Images before the US attack
Images of the destruction of buildings after the US attack
Synchronization to the millimeter. As airstrikes blinded defenses and plunged parts of Caracas into darkness, the videos and analyzes that have been made public have revealed that the US special forces were advancing as perfectly coordinated pieces. Helicopters of elite units entered the city at low altitudesupported by electronic warfare, in-flight refueling and constant surveillance from the air.
The assault on Maduro’s refuge, described as an authentic urban fortress, was the climax of a choreography in which every second counted. Even the possibility of having to open armored doors with blowtorches was integrated into the plan, in Trump’s own words.
Before the attack
After the attack
No casualties. The result was a fulminant irruptionresistance neutralized in minutes and the extraction of the objective before the Venezuelan defensive system could react coherently.
For Washington, the balance was revealing: no dead soldiers, complete control of the situation and an orderly withdrawal, as if a perfect mission in a digital campaign had been completed. Venezuela, for its part, has reported that the operation left at least 80 dead.
The best controls in the game. The episode explains better than any speech why the United States and a few powers play in a league of their own. The key is not only to have more planes or ships, but to absolute integration intelligence, command and control, secure communications, space sensors and rapid intervention forces. Washington is able to gather in real time information from satellitesagents on the ground, drones and reconnaissance aircraft, process it in distributed command centers and translate it into immediate orders for units operating thousands of kilometers away.
That ability to “see it all” and act instantly reduces the margin of error to levels that few can match today. Russia or China can deploy brute force or deny entire areas, but executing a capture operation of that caliber, in a foreign capital, with such precision and without assuming significant losses, remains a privilege. almost exclusive of the United States.
The final message. If you want, the attack on Venezuela has left an uncomfortable lesson for the rest of the world. The war of the 21st century is not always decided in large battles or long fronts, but in control roomsdata flows and decisions made in front of screens that condense chaos into understandable symbols.
For those who master this technology, combat becomes a succession of calculated actionswhere one’s own human risk is minimized and the adversary barely has room to respond. In other words: the attack on Caracas has shown that, when it comes to this type of war, the great powers not only play another game, but also have the best controls, the complete map and the saved game before even starting.
Image | Vantor
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